America First Legal, a Trump-Aligned Group, Is Spoiling for a Fight

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America First Legal, a Trump-Aligned Group, Is Spoiling for a Fight

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The legal group has filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asserting that “woke corporations” like Disney, Nike, Mattel, Hershey, United Airlines and the National Football League discriminate against white males. It has filed lawsuits arguing that school districts in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and Arizona promote “radical” pro-transgender and pro-gay attitudes. It has filed amicus briefs to protect Florida minors from drag shows and former President Donald J. Trump from a federal jury trial.

For those who wonder what Stephen Miller has been up to since he left the Trump White House as senior policy adviser, the answer is litigating loudly.

His conservative nonprofit group, America First Legal Foundation, is no ordinary law firm, beginning with the fact that Mr. Miller, 38, is not a lawyer. But judging by the flurry of filings it has generated over the past three years — more than a hundred lawsuits, E.E.O.C. complaints, amicus briefs and other legal demands — the foundation’s small in-house legal team punches above its weight.

Assessing its success rate is more complicated, partly because many of the group’s cases are still pending, while the E.E.O.C. does not publicize which complaints it investigates. But winning may be beside the point.

America First Legal is primarily notable as a policy harbinger for a second Trump term, and for the considerable trouble it causes. “There are lots of conservative legal organizations out there,” said Thomas Healy, a professor of law at Seton Hall University. “What distinguishes America First Legal from the others is its unabashed connection to MAGA ideology.”

Mr. Miller, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is highly likely to return to a second Trump administration should the former president win in November. His legal group includes several lawyers who worked in Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, and who share his hard-line views on immigration, gender and race.


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